American Quote by Adina Porter

My parents came from the south. So their ancestors were actually slaves in this country.

— Isaac Wright Jr

I didn't technically grow up in the South, but both my parents were from there.

— Kevin Young

I'm the descendant of enslaved black people in this country. You could've been born in 1820 if you were black and looked back to…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

My ancestors fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War; I was raised in Natchez, Miss.; I performed in the Confederate Pageant for a…

— Greg Iles

Slavery wasn't something that grew up in the American South. and black people were not the first to be slaves in America. Before them…

— Lorne Greene

I am a descendant of slaves. My great grandmother Mary Thomas, born in 1865, was the child of a slave. That is just three…

— Linda Thomas-Greenfield

My parents never told us that our great-grandmothers had been slaves.

— Constance Baker Motley

I am the descendant of slaves, of people that were born from a slave and a slave master.

— Cory Booker

Most of the ancestors that I can trace were born here in the United States of America. And then it goes back to slavery.…

— Herman Cain

I learned that not only am I a descendant of slaves, but that I am also a descendant of royalty, that there are politicians…

— Cuba Gooding, Jr

I always read all these books about the slaves. My mother is very educated. My father would talk to us like we were grown…

— Wynton Marsalis

I'm descended from southern slaves, and I'm descended on my mother's side from northern European Protestant immigrants.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams